By Sarah Stebbins
Photos by Hannah Hoggatt
From our March 2025 issue
When Mario and Kitty Costello unpacked their new leprechaun-green kitchen cabinets, their teenage daughters threw some shade. “They were like, ‘Seriously, that’s the color you picked?’” Kitty says. “But I wanted the kitchen to look like things we make.” The verdant cupboards match emerald brass-and-epoxy knobs in the couple’s metal home-décor line and inspired the vivid coral Kitty painted the adjoining dining space. “I kept coming back to the idea that flowers have these orangey colors and they look great with a green stem,” she says. After 12 years of renting on the West Coast, the couple was thrilled to find a well-kept 1948 Cape in Camden (with an attached garage they could turn into a metalwork shop) for sale in their price range. Awash in pale, neutral hues, the interior was a blank canvas, and they set about splashing it with vibrant wallpaper and a rainbow of paint shades that evoke their modern lighting, clock, and hardware collections. “It was like a giant art project,” Mario says.
Exterior
Only a cherry-red door and Kitty’s sky-blue 1979 VW Super Beetle, Dolly, hint at the boisterous palette inside the Costellos’ Cape. After relocating here in 2022, the couple transformed the garage into a metalwork shop for their business, Daughter Manufacturing, with board-and-batten siding, metal roofing, awning windows, and a door flanked by glass paneling where a pair of roll-up doors had been. “We wanted it to look residential, as opposed to this industrial space,” Kitty says.
Sunroom
A perforated-metal World Market pendant effects a contrasting (or coordinating) starry sky in the sunroom. An ’80s addition the couple plans to eventually turn into a living space, it currently serves as a greenhouse and crafting room. During the winter, Kitty, a former florist, keeps her houseplants and outdoor potted plants in the heated space, where, she says, they double in size. In a northwest corner, tropical species thrive atop Ikea sawhorses fitted with a slatted surface Kitty built to allow air to circulate beneath the plants.
Bedroom
“I like to give each room its own personality,” says Kitty, who created a chair rail with Shaker peg racks on one side of the whitewashed primary bedroom, then painted the racks and everything below them — wall, baseboard, a window’s sill and part of its molding — in Blue’d Up, by Clare. Following the chair-rail line, she continued the two-tone effect on the rest of the room’s walls and even the door. Against a swath of cobalt, tomato-colored sconces, made by the couple, and peachy Brooklinen bedding pack a near-complementary punch.
Dining Room
The Cape had little in the way of built-in storage, so Kitty installed shelving and Shaker pegs around the dining room’s perimeter. Painted to match the wall color (Benjamin Moore’s Pink Mix), they provide architectural oomph and a spot for keepsakes, such as the cowboy boots the couple’s daughters outgrew and a vintage brass telescope and diving helmet from Mario’s father. Above the improvised built-ins, Kitty created a striped design with painted pieces of baseboard molding spaced at irregular intervals. “I wanted a pattern that was imperfect as an ode to the house, which is very crooked,” she says.
Living Room
The couple leaned in to a cozy camp vibe, juxtaposing an existing fieldstone fireplace with Benjamin Moore’s Forest Green on the walls. Kitty stitched the vibrant pillow covers and crafted a slipcover for a hand-me-down armchair from vintage Pendleton blankets purchased at Camden’s Antiques at 10 Mechanic. Teak plant hangers from Etsy and a pair of Mondrianesque brass-and-epoxy candle sconces, made by the Costellos, decorate the wall above the mantel. Next to the sofa is a prototype of their inaugural design: an Art Deco–inspired polished-aluminum lamp with a wool-felt shade.
Kitchen
To temper Benjamin Moore’s Kelly Green on the cabinets, the Costellos opted for snowy walls (and white knobs from their line), butcher-block countertops from Cutler’s Crafted Downeast, and mossy ceramic Schoolhouse light fixtures. Union contractor Jason Burgess worked with the couple to reimagine the layout, install new maple flooring, and craft a handy fold-up countertop. Open shelves lend airiness and display cookbooks, pottery, and wooden bowls that belonged to Kitty and Mario’s late mothers. “When you look at our house, you can tell we didn’t design everything all at once to go together,” Mario says. “It’s a happy collision of things we’ve accumulated during our life together.”
